"Then it all went horribly wrong."

August 11, 2016 12:23 PM

Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart "The geography of this catastrophe is broad and its causes are many, but its consequences — war and uncertainty throughout the world — are familiar to us all. Scott Anderson’s story gives the reader a visceral sense of how it all unfolded, through the eyes of six characters in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Accompanying Anderson’s text are 10 portfolios by the photographer Paolo Pellegrin, drawn from his extensive travels across the region over the last 14 years, as well as a landmark virtual-reality experience that embeds the viewer with the Iraqi fighting forces during the battle to retake Falluja."
posted by lauranesson (10 comments total)

A small warning: this is a book-length project. Poynter discusses the making-of.
posted by lauranesson at 12:32 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Couple comments removed, let's try not to (even jokingly) let the madness of the US election infect especially the beginnings of unrelated threads.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:01 PM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

I started to read this on my phone, but realized that I should just buy the issue because it looks like a painful read (emotionally), that may take me a while to get through...
posted by Chuffy at 1:29 PM on August 11, 2016

Probably about 3/5 of the way through - so far, excellent story-telling. Heartbreaking stuff.
posted by rosswald at 3:25 PM on August 11, 2016

To me, part of the danger in revolutionary politics can be seen in the compromise Laila Soueif made in her post-revolution voting: either reverse the revolution and return to the same-old corrupted politics, or vote against her long-standing leftist principles to preserve the revolution. Even if the only way to fix a society is through a massive restart, there is no guarantee that the values of the revolutionaries will be the ones that guide the aftermath. From section 18:

There had been 13 candidates, and the only one certain to advance was Mohamed Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the one party that had unified enough Islamist voters to form a meaningful voting bloc. Against him, Laila was ready to support any of the others — save one. That was Ahmed Shafik, Hosni Mubarak’s former prime minister. That afternoon, it was announced that the runoff contenders were Morsi and Shafik.

“So what to do?” Laila asked rhetorically. “Morsi was completely unacceptable, but now it was him or Shafik, so we were stuck. Well, never Shafik — that meant a return to the Mubarak era — so. ...”

In just this way, Laila Soueif, the stalwart feminist and leftist, found herself backing the election of a man who advocated returning Egypt to traditional Islamic values. Many other Egyptians were aghast at the choice given to them; in the June runoff, Morsi barely squeaked in with 51.7 percent of the vote.

[...]

As Scott Long, an activist who was at the meeting, recalled on his personal blog, the normally soft-­spoken Ahmed finally slapped his hand against the conference table. “I will not accept that the American government, or Amnesty, or anyone, will tell me that I need to tolerate a military dictatorship in order to avoid a takeover by Islamist people,” he said. “I will not accept such false choices.”

Now, with Morsi’s overreach as president, that “false choice” was becoming increasingly stark.

posted by palindromic at 8:02 AM on August 12, 2016

Scott Anderson on Democracy Now: Donald Trump Claims Obama & Clinton Founded ISIS, But Bush Negotiated U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq

"Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart": NYT Mag Examines Region Since 2003 U.S. Invasion
posted by homunculus at 9:58 AM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Perhaps our problem is we managed to overthrow a monarchy and create a secular democracy and assume it can happen again.
posted by tommasz at 12:57 PM on August 12, 2016

This is an astounding piece of work.
posted by X-Himy at 1:29 PM on August 12, 2016

"....what follows is one of the most clear-eyed, powerful and human explanations of what has gone wrong in this region that you will ever read."

It is indeed. Thank you so much for posting this. It's an incredibly fine journalistic work.
posted by zarq at 4:13 AM on August 16, 2016

Boy in the ambulance: shocking image emerges of Syrian child pulled from Aleppo rubble
posted by homunculus at 6:14 PM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]